"Five or six minutes more at this headlong pace."
"We are nearing an ambush, through which we must cleave our way. Do no less than I do, and we shall be safe!"
"With heaven my aid, I shall do more!"
The half-breed found a broad way by a miracle of knowledge and faultless application.
"To the right—wheel to the right!" vociferated he abruptly, as half a dozen arrows and a light spear or two whizzed under the noses of the suddenly turned horses.
"Ride them down! Now! Hurrah!"
"Hurrah!" cried Dearborn, firing a shot and hurling his gun in his frenzy at the row of dark faces that grinned with flaming eyes like a wall before him.
Few men, except with a long spear, can steadily receive cavalry. Only one Indian really awaited the English youth on his approach; his lance snapped in in the horse's chest. It fell on him, enclosing him between the forelegs. Dearborn was dismounted; but Bill was before him, on the ground, steadied him as he rose, put a revolver in his hand, and bade him fire "low and fast." They had passed through the ambuscade at the cost of the two horses, and the ten shots they poured forth enabled them to have a start in their retreat on foot. They were speedily in a hollow of the rocky bluffs, where no sane Indian would follow an armed foe. The ground was sandy, now mingled with dry snow as hard, and at random rose needles of stone of varied dimensions, among which the half Indian trapper serenely threaded his way. At the foot of a nearly perpendicular mountain they were brought to a standstill. The face seemed smooth as if polished at first glance, but there ran a ledge, or cornice, as Alpine climbers call it, along that level spread.
"I see now why a woman could not have accompanied us in our flight," said Dearborn.
"No, you don't quite," replied Bill, drily, as he led the young man slowly upwards on this narrow footway. No quadruped could have mounted, for these men had to proceed with their backs to the wall, or face to it, in the case of the inexperienced Englishman. (He feared vertigo if he looked out or down on the abyss.) At last the ledge ended abruptly. But, about breast high, the granite was cracked horizontally, just wide enough for one's finger to be hid in it.